Ode to Gomorra
Came across this gem of literary usage spawned from an ancient Deadlands game. Some are mine. Some are from kindred gamers. You can decide which…
Gomorra at night
Makes the Biblical city
Look like paradise
There once was a man from Gomorra
Who said after reading the Torah,
“It won’t be my fault
If my wife turns to salt,
‘Cos I just lit up all my menorah.”
A striding soul lost in the sands of Gomorra, walking.
Blazing fingers of fire, keeping him alive in the night.
Madness reaches, clawing and scraping, the shadows talking.
The cityscape looms offering sanctuary from flight.
Gomorra embrace me unto your heart, grant me your boon.
No other doth burn as true in the wasting of the maze.
Without your ghost rock and glory and shootouts at high noon,
Would you sing out to the hollow of your infernal ways?
To see your endless streets in the land of the living dead,
Amidst the fear, the carnage, the rage of the Reckoning,
Not one other would I dare allow to walk in my stead,
As if fate itself waved a bony finger, beckoning.
Thus with magic in my heart and lead in my soul, I come,
To follow the path of the damned, to usurp your kingdom.
Though prairie winds had chilled men to their cores
By train or boat they hastened to its shores
By steed or steam they braved the darkest skies
Gomorra’s light attracted them like flies
They tore apart the cliffs of steepest stone
Like vultures tearing carcass from the bone
And quarried ghostly rocks beneath the clay
Until the nightfall swallowed up the day
And from their graves the rotting dead did rise
Their hunger for our flesh shone in their eyes
And so we gathered all across the land
A posse made of woman, child and man
The dust of all our horses hides the sun
We’ll slay the beasts with bowie knife or gun
My wife she up and left me
And my dog he up and died
So I took of for Gomorra
Beneath the mountainside
It was there I saw some horrors
That’d tan your yeller hide
The smallest men jumped ten feet high
The biggest broke down and cried
Soooooooo……
Look out for Gomorra
It’ll put ya in the grave
Then you’ll be up ‘fore the mornin’
Pluckin’ feathers from the brave
An’ there ain’t no cove securer
Than the darkness of a cave
You kin find it in Gomorra
If it’s flesh ‘n blood ya crave
You may think that you’re a big shot
That I’m whistlin’ Dixie too
That the Rio Grande is smaller
Than the lies I’m tellin’ you
[Refrain]
But I seen it with my own eyes
Every buckaroo or Sioux
Knows the legend of Gomorra
‘N you’d better know it too
[Refrain]
When the mountains cradle the setting sun
O’er plains of amber grain
And the stars alight the Gomorra night
And the tide begins to wane
Naught a sound but the gentle breeze shall carry ‘cross the plain
Except the howls of the walking dead spittin’ out your brain.
I once new a girl, a beauty she was,
And she hailed from faraway Dublin.
As Gomorra’s queen of soiled doves,
She’d set your blood to bubblin’.
Down the streets I stumbled
My eyesight already doublin’
Until I found McCrumb’s saloon,
And my life did get to troublin’.
Ohhhhhhhh!
No man can truly resist her,
Your heart pounding like a drum.
Staring blindly as she beckons,
From head to toe you’re numb.
No matter how she frightens
Over and again they’d come,
To lay their souls before her,
The wicked Cerise McCrumb.
My heart was lost forever
The moment I stepped inside.
I watched her dancing madly
Like a wild bronco ride.
I asked the barkeep quickly
About my would-be-bride,
And pouring me a rotgut,
This is what he replied.
[Refrain]
Now her arse was somethin’ mighty.
Her hips like none I’ve seen.
Her bosom swaying to and fro
Could have wiped the dance floor clean.
Hair of fire and brimstone,
Her eyes had a ghastly sheen,
And with her gnarled meat hooks
She’d gladly pull out your spleen.
[Refrain]
To live, to die, to rise again at night
The West was won by those who did as thus
And yet come men who dare defy the beasts
Gomorra calls the bravest to their graves
“Hath thou seen my calves?” said the cowherd to the shepherd girl.
Responded she anon, “Alas, but they are at thy feet!”
Casting gaze on Gomorra plains he said, “I see them not!”
Said she, “Thou rideth horse too much, and thus they’ve atrophied!”
There’s fortune to be found
Beneath Gomorra’s soil
Lest you think my mind unsound
There’s fortune to be found
Go you there beneath the ground
Where evil things do spoil
There’s fortune to be found
Beneath Gomorra’s soil